Tunisia based private equity firm Africinvest has teamed up with Cathay Capital — a global private equity firm based in Paris — to launch a new Africa tech fund with a target raise of $168 million. Details are still forthcoming, but the Cathay Africinvest Innovation Fund will focus primarily on series A to C stage…
Change is hard, and, in some cases, it can be downright scary. Technology is driving a lot of change in the 21st century, and it’s possible that the biggest, most “intimidating” changes are yet to come. For instance, robotics, AI (artificial intelligence), and automation are huge, important technology trends that are taking the world by…
Samsung envisages itself leading the smartphone pack for another decade, despite a serious challenge from competitor Huawei. The battle is on for the position of world’s number one smartphone manufacturer, and it’s currently between Samsung — which holds the spot now — Apple, and Huawei, both of which are right behind it. Huawei’s Richard Yu,…
A new piece of bipartisan legislation aims to protect people from one of the sketchiest practices that tech companies employ to subtly influence user behavior. Known as “dark patterns,” this dodgy design strategy often pushes users toward giving up their privacy unwittingly and allowing a company deeper access to their personal data. To fittingly celebrate…
As Google Cloud Next opened today in San Francisco, Accenture announced its intent to acquire Cirruseo, a French cloud consulting firm that specializes in Google Cloud intelligence services. The companies did not share the terms of the deal. Accenture says that Cirruseo’s strength and deep experience in Google’s cloud-based artificial intelligence solutions should help as…
After Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud’s recently minted CEO, joined the company, he took hundreds of meetings to learn what the company’s prospective and current customers were looking for. The overarching theme of those conversations was always similar, he told me during an interview at Google’s Cloud Next conference: “Love the technology — amazed at it.…
Flying cars definitely sound cool, but whether they’re actually a good idea is up for debate. Fortunately they do seem to have some surefire benefits, among which you can now count improved efficiency — in theory, and on long trips. But it’s something! Air travel takes an enormous amount of energy, since you have to…
Udacity, the $1 billion online education startup, has laid off about 20 percent of its workforce and is restructuring its operations as the company’s co-founder Sebastian Thrun seeks to bring costs in line with revenue without curbing growth, TechCrunch has learned. The objective is to do more than simply keep the company afloat, Thrun told…
Occasionally, we get to test a product with the potential to transform the consumer landscape, to get us to start thinking about something in an entirely new way. The first 360-degree video cameras tried very hard to do this, but they ended up being little more than gimmicks (arguably, many still are today). Even as cameras…
At today’s House Judiciary hearing addressing “Hate Crimes and the Rise of White Nationalism,” hate appears to have prevailed. As the hearing’s live stream aired on the House Judiciary’s YouTube channel, comments in the live chat accompanying the stream were so inflammatory that YouTube actually disabled the chat feature mid-hearing. Many of those comments were…
